Introduction
Stress Management has been an issue to various managements in both public and private sectors. Productivity and efficiency are directly affected by the ability of employees to manage their stress in an effective manner. The management should therefore help them reduce their level of stress through these methods: institutional programs, collateral programs, training and development, and support incentives. If stress is managed properly, organizations can reduce costs that arise due to employees stress.
Causes of Stress at Work
Many organizations in the world, both in public and private sectors, are facing many challenges that range from economic recession, international insecurity, increasingly knowledgeable customers and cutthroat competition in the market. Business environment has become unfriendly, and survival of firms largely depends on how best the management can approach the current market changes. Daft (2010, p.432) explains that for a firm to be effective in its operations, there must be emphasis on the human aspect.
The employees must be put at the forefront and they must understand the strategic objectives of the institution. Employees are also faced with many issues such as job insecurity, poor working conditions, family issues and career ambition among others that affect their performance.
Stress among employees poses a serious threat to development of any organization. World Health Organization, in its recent reports, has stated that stress is a major cause of many health problems. Stress also reduces the attention of an individual to less than 50%(Lake, Griffiths and Cox, 2003, p.5). Stress has made many employees lose their lives at workplaces, especially those dealing with heavy and dangerous plants.
A driver can easily lose focus of the road if s/he is under an uncontrolled level of stress. This can lead to loss of not just his/her life, but also those of other important employees.Upon this basis, this report was conducted in order to come up with ways through which stress can be put in control. From the findings of the report, I came to improve my knowledge on the causes, Implications and ways of managing stress.
While undertaking the survey on management of stress in organizations, I came to realize that the sources of stress to employees are many and vary from one employee to another.
While some employees are stressed by lack of ambition to improve their careers, others are affected by the poor working conditions and low wages. In addition, family issues at home affect the performances of other employees. Lastly, employees are stressed by work related stress such as the type of job performed or the supervision and management received in the course of duty.
In order to manage stress, it is important that an organization and its employees identify the causes of stress. I realized that it is in the light of these causes of stress that stress can be effectively managed at work. This is because the programs set up to manage stress are focused on eliminating the cause of stress and alleviating the effects to both the individual employee and the firm
Stress Management
While conducting survey on stress management in organizations, I realized that many scholars have conducted research on issues related to stress. The scholars have examined how it affects the output and the general success of firms. Their findings converge at the point that stress leads to serious failures and if not taken care of in time, an organization can be forced to fold up its operation.
Competition in the current market is so stiff that a little dissatisfaction from a customer will lead to his avoidance from it in his next visit. While employees serve the firm’s customers, they too manufacture the products. Any dissatisfaction on their part could be detrimental to the performance of the firm.
I came across Parker (2007, p.23) who asserts that organizations should have proper stress management units to avoid situations where employees transfer their stress to customers; through poor customer service. Leka, Griffiths and Cox (2003, p. 3) taught me that work related stress are because of mismatching of work assignment and employees abilities.
An employee is given a task that is out of his/her scope. They hence strain to attain the requirements of the task, leading to stress. Management should make an effort and match employee’s capabilities and their skills.
In spite of the urgent need to manage stress, I learnt that stress management could be complex. Fried (2008, p. 61) posits that stress management units within a firm can use various techniques to reduce strains among the employees.Form these authors, I leant that some of the organizations I surveyed have employed various stress management techniques some of which include these.
In the course of my survey, I learnt that many firms have employed collateral programs, which I came to realize encourage employees to move on with life. Through these programs, employees are able to manage their stress while improving their performance. Some of the collateral programs I came across included the health promotion programs, employee wellness programs and stress management programs.
Such programs contain many activities that improve the activities of an organization with regard to the needs of an employee. An important lesson is that the wellness of employees is not only about the physical health of employees but about the surrounding environment and things that affect the employees both directly and indirectly (Cunningham 2000, p. 109).
I found out that some organizations employed institutional programs to reduce the stress among their employees. Such institutional programs entailed various mechanisms employing many strategies to reduce stress. For instance, I found one organization using the work balance strategy that aimed at establishing a balance between work and social life. This strategy entailed redesigning various jobs for employees such as working in shifts rather than over time.
In order to reduce and contain stress on organizations, I found out that other firms have incorporated other stress management programs. For instance, one firm had begun training and development program for its employees as well as technical skills training programs. Through such programs, I learnt that the firm wanted to reduce stress related to type of job an employee does.
In addition, while other firms were intervening by training their employees on ways of managing stress, other employers had established support intervention centers in the firm.
Under such centers, any employee perceived of being stressed by any issue either at work or at home would visit such centers. According to the findings of my survey, the centers had proved an effective way of managing stress in organizations since organizations reported reduced stress among their employees and improved performance (Weinberg, Southerland & Cooper, 2010, p. 61).
Conclusion
Stress at workplace is a factor that managements cannot afford to overlook currently. Its effects are devastating and it can completely paralyze the normal operation of a firm. For this reason, many organizations have come up with various means of managing stress. Some of the methods put forward are institutional programs, collateral programs, training and development, technical skills and support incentives. All these programs work towards achieving a stress free working environment.
List of References
Cunningham, J 2000, The stress management sourcebook, Lowell House Publisher, Los Angeles.
Daft, R 2010, Organizational theory and design, South-Western Cengage Learning, Ohio.
Fried, R 2008, Stress management for success in the workplace, Lulu.com, Washington.
Leka, S, Griffiths, A & Cox, T 2003, Work organization and stress, Institute of Work, Health and Organization, London.
Parker, H 2007, Stress management, Chandni Chowk, Delhi.
Weinberg, A, Sutherland, V & Cooper, C 2010, Organizational stress management: A strategic approach, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.